Tuesday, 17 February 2015

Palmerston North Police use 'weird' interrogation practice,

“A very dear friend sat on his sun porch and pondered
his adventurist past, looking back he realised that many long years had passed
by, in fact many of them had been very exciting, especially since he had been at
the forefront of the very meek and virtually non-violent [by today’s standards]
Terrorist movement in Scotland…who were seeking justice from their English long
term slave masters.

He was of course young back then, but he had a love for
Scotland, his much loved highland home. And he shared willingly in a little
nationalistic mischief behaviour… and was in the end forced to depart the local
scene.

He headed to Europe, Germany in particular and started
an adventure which included working for the American military and that in itself
was just a little ironic he thought…from there he ended up in the United States
and after being educated at university he commenced working amongst the world of
books, a librarian no less.

This saw him slowly but progressively edge his way south
until he crossed the massive Pacific Ocean and end up in Palmerston North.

He had left a country where the police were a mixed bag,
in fact it was often thought and portrayed in movies that they were more corrupt
than the local bad guys. He had arrived in a country that he thought held police
behaviour to be non-corrupt and he preferred this belief. But was or is his
belief correct?

This man was also one of rare breed of people who
understood what the word politics meant to people in their everyday
activities…in fact besides being employed in various roles ranging from Massey
University to editor of one of our local papers his participation in community
collective activism continued to grow. He believed in justice, real justice not
pretend justice.

But by now he he was paying dearly for a childhood
living in the shocking and disgusting damp slum housing of Scotland. His life up
to this point had been both exciting and sometimes emotionally rewarding but
alas, his past health problems were catching up with him.

But when in December 2014 a couple of police persons
paid him a call…and asked him to give a hand writing sample, for It would appear that someone had sent
threatening messages to staff, or someone at the PNCC, and it would seem they must have brought the
matter to the attention of the local police, who in turn had somehow or other
linked the hand written letter/note/ to him. I don’t think he was ever told the
actual connection..

Our gentle and unsuspecting suspect, which is what he
must have been for the police to have even connected him to the ‘threatening’
message…somebody must have brought up his name, and this appears to have turned
this very gentle and unwell person into a suspect of the highest order. We all
know today how easy it is to brush others with the broad and misused term
‘terrorist’ or some such other equally stupid title. While the police behaviour may not be actually stupid in this case it must come close...

But the strangest part in this police exercise in 'weird'
interrogation practice, was what they asked him to actually do…which was to
write a ‘confession’ confessing to the writing of the letter to the council’,
now I know that is hard to comprehend, but according to him that is exactly what
took place. [It's looking more like stupid as we learn more.]

Naturally he was taken aback by this most unusual
request from the boys [and girls] in blue, in fact he was so shocked by this
outrageous behaviour that he wrote to the Independent Police Conduct Authority
to lay a complaint about what he considered the shocking and illogical approach
and practice of the local police.

He saw this strange behaviour as simply a process of
possible entrapment by collecting so-called dummy confessions’ under the guise
of collecting specimens of peoples handwriting for investigative purposes. And I
must admit I was inclined to agree with his point of view.

His letter of complaint to the IPCA brought a response
and the local Police in the shape of a Detective Senior Sergeant was dispatched
to talk about the complaint to see if he would be happy to accept the Police
Departments explanations of its behaviour. He asked me to join him in this
discussion and I willingly agreed. That took place on the 23rd of
December 2014.

Around the middle of February my friend received a reply
from the local area commander for the PN region. It was a very interesting letter
firstly it states that the process of obtaining hand writing samples that the
police take is not entrapment…in their view, they give no legal opinion. But the
letter writer agrees that senior-management [police] will look at the process,
to ensure that entrapment cannot occur…lastly the local commander gave an
assurance the the process used was properly followed. He based that on what a
police person wrote in his/her case notebook.[One assumes that what was recorded was correct and balanced, how does one check?]

Nowhere in the police reply did they concede that the
language used was in the form of a confession…this of course was the main basis
of my friend’s complaint. In fact they avoid reprinting exactly what was said
during the interview by the two visiting police officers on the 8th
of December 2014 other than to talk about the notebook entry.

The purpose of this blog is to seek feedback from those
in the legal profession about the process used by the police…and to answer the
more serious question about the police behaviour and that is “how can you seek a handwriting sample without somehow informing the person involved of why and on what grounds you selected him
for this style of weird questioning used by the police and lastly could this evidence be used in a court of law.

So if you have an opinion please get in touch via my blog site or email me at wheeler@inspire.net.nz

The person involved has agreed to this blog being posted and has read the content before doing so..